Dr. Silverman is Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is a faculty member of the Pulmonary & Critical Care Division in the Department of Medicine. In addition to his clinical career, Dr. Silverman has forged a career in the field of medical ethics and research ethics. He received his Master of Arts Degree in Bioethics from Georgetown University in 1995.

He is chairperson of the Ethics Committee at the University of Maryland Medical System (from 1990). His teaching efforts include:

Director of the Program in Clinical Ethics at the University of Maryland Medical Center, where he is responsible for the ethics education program for the hospital staff (lectures, arrangement of a monthly seminar series, and publication of a quarterly newsletter)

Director of the Ethics Curriculum for Internal Medicine Residents

He is a co-investigator on a NIH-funded Hospice Education Program for the School of Medicine. His teaching efforts have been recognized by several teaching awards, including the Senior Resident's Award for Teaching (1988) and the Senior Medical Student's Award for Humanism in Medicine (2001).

Dr. Silverman's research efforts are in the area of critical care (PI on the NIH-funded Clinical Trials Network for the Treatment of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and medical ethics, specifically in the fields of end-of-life issues and research ethics. He has published papers in peer-review journals on the topics of ethics committees, end-of-life issues, and research ethics. He recently published an investigation on the degree of variability among institutional review boards on approved research practices and informed consent in the context of a multi-center clinical trial. Dr. Silverman lectures on research ethics (e.g. informed consent, history of research ethics) both nationally and internationally.

His research ethics efforts includes: ethics advisor for the UMB IRB, Chair of the Data and Safety Monitoring Committee for the NIH Center for Alternative Medicine Research of Arthritis at UMB, and chair of the Research Ethics Committee for the NIH-sponsored Clinical Trials Network for the Treatment of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. He is also the Principal Investigator for the NIH-sponsored training program entitled: Research Ethics Training Initiative in Egypt.